Child mining whereby children aged between 6 and 14 is one of the worst categories of child labour in Uganda and in Moroto District in particular. Child mining in Moroto District is one the main sources of child abuse, exploitation, potential threat to health, safety moral and psychological development of children in the district. Many children are caught up in life threatening activities in the extraction, excavation, crushing of marble, limestone and gold to eke out a dismal survival.

The major causes of child mining in Moroto are hunger, parental poverty, illiteracy, dropout of school, orphanhood and unemployment among others. Incredible hunger makes most of the households resort to self-rationing to one meal a day which meal is too inadequate. Other households depend on wild fruits such as wild berries and bitter leaves for food. As a result of extreme hunger, desperately hungry young children who totter on the brinks of starvation resort to the most devastating damaging and harmful artisanal mining labour to eke out a dismissal survival. But as the children extract and excavate and crush marble and limestone and gold to survive, the suffering, the harms and damages they are undergoing and enduring is devastating and beyond description.  

Mining children carry loads of the excavated and crushed marble and limestone on their small heads and in their frail hands burdening beyond their age and abilities causing scorching chest pains and back aches. Exposure to clouds of dust and inhaling it while mining makes most of the children to suffer from acute respiratory infections. The children’s bare feet get pricked and injured by thorns, sharp stones and rocks when collecting firewood in the bushes to burn huge marble   and limestone for easy breakage as the practice. The children suffer severe burns and get life changing injuries from immense flames of fire when burning the huge marble and limestone. The injuries and wounds get torn and re-open as the children do mining the next day. The pain from the reopened wounds and injuries is more piercing. It is bleak. The bleakest part is that as the vulnerable children forge a dismal survival in the mining pits, they don’t attend school. The children’s suffering worsens every day. 

There’s something we can immediately do to rescue mining children’s endangered lives in Moroto. The harms and the dangers being inflicted and the risks can be brought to an end. In order to achieve this, Volunteer Effort for Rural Development (VERD) is taking a three prolonged strategy: 

One, removing the children from mining activities and mining pits and placing them in school to learn. Two, providing children with basic food support and scholastic materials to enable them remain in school. Three, providing children with medical treatment and alternative live hoods. Alternative livelihoods will prevent children’s households from relying on child mining labour. These are the most urgent priorities to save the lives of these at-risk children in Moroto and enable them move forward.

The children’s situation is particularly worse in the mining sites at Kosiroi, Nakomorowaret, Rata, Lotongir, Nakidok, Nadiket, Katikekile and Tapae among others where this children’s tragedy is occurring

Dear friends, the mining children’s situation in Moroto calls for solidarity of human beings. As a global family, we are all in this together. We kindly, humbly and respectfully reach out to your very kind heart seeking your compassion and mercy to save a child’s life.
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